Wheres softly softly ?

I would agree with the police statey type thing if it was a regular occurance, but lets get this straight. We don't.

In this very rare case we were dealing with someone that likes to use loopholes to turn things around and blame the accusers. Our intention was to show what we have been up against for a very long time. We may have achieved that with som and we may have upset others. With matters like this you have to show proof otherwise the accused uses the absence of said proof to beat the argument to death. We have been there many many times with this person. You even start doubting your own sanity.

We did have people telling us, even complaining of what was happening re PMs being sent. Would it have been fair to use these as evidence if they could have been recognised as who the recipient was, or would it have been better to do a search on a key word and only make ourselves visible for people to have a go at?

I suggest you ask some of your other forums whether they do this. I would expect most of them will only do it in severe circumstances, as is our option. I also hope that they are as honest with you as we are being.

John and Sue wrote: Neither of you said that during the last waltz on New Years Eve......

That was you. :omg:

As has been said, only the site owner has the ability to see/read/search PMs. None of the mods have. To be honest I always assumed mods etc could read posts on other forums, no matter how much it was disputed. Now I can only speak for here, but I promise you we can't.

We have been open and honest about what has been accessed and also transparent about concerns, allegations and bans...not all forums are. I would have thought that was a point in T-Bar's favour. Many other forums just ban.

cjj wrote: I would agree with the police statey type thing if it was a regular occurance, but lets get this straight. We don't.

In this very rare case we were dealing with someone that likes to use loopholes to turn things around and blame the accusers. Our intention was to show what we have been up against for a very long time. We may have achieved that with som and we may have upset others. With matters like this you have to show proof otherwise the accused uses the absence of said proof to beat the argument to death. We have been there many many times with this person. You even start doubting your own sanity.

We did have people telling us, even complaining of what was happening re PMs being sent. Would it have been fair to use these as evidence if they could have been recognised as who the recipient was, or would it have been better to do a search on a key word and only make ourselves visible for people to have a go at?

I suggest you ask some of your other forums whether they do this. I would expect most of them will only do it in severe circumstances, as is our option. I also hope that they are as honest with you as we are being.

LOL my main residence couldnt give a monkeys about reading pms as as due to the complete lack of moderation if someones pissing you off you just tell 'em in no uncertain terms what you think of them , its quite refreshing !
Anyway I appreciate your candidness and really hope that regardless of the circumstance the reading of PRIVATE messages gets put off the agenda .

I am now away to crack one off whilst thinking of johns hairy cleavage :coat: night all

I was going to say let's shake hands and make up, but after the last comment I think I'll just wish you sweet dreams.

Just for clarity on PMs

Can I access PM's - Short answer is yes
Can any other Mod or Admin - NO

And here's how its done.

1. Make a copy of the forum database and download to my PC
2. Extract 3 tables from the database file, they are
a. The users table - in this instance i 'm interest in two fields , the username and userid number
for example my user name is Psymon , my userid is 62 , all data is referenced against the User ID and not name
b. Message recipient table, this table has three fields i need , the Sender ID number, the Recipient ID Number and the Message ID Number
c. The Message table, this has two fields i need, the Message ID Number (again) and the Message text
3. Now i have my tables, I need to know what I'm looking for, As this would be for investigation i would have some keywords in mind
4. Filter the message table so only Message Text which contains my keywords are displayed, currently there are 13531 records / PM's , the filter should bring this down to a much smaller amount. hopefully only a couple.
on a side note 13531 records, do you guys ever delete old messages, I guess not :lol:
5. Now i have some message text and a matching Message ID Number
6. Find the Message ID Number in the Message Recipient Table
7. Now i have the Sender and Recipient User IDs
8. Find the Users IDs in the User table
9. Finally I have the the sender user name, the recipient user name and the message text.
All in all that takes a little over an hour to track down a PM, Fun eh!

Expanding on that into the electronic world we live in, as my day job part of my responsibility is that of a system administrator for around 200 companies, As the system administrator I have the highest level of access on these systems, These companies range from 5 user networks to multinationals , to NHS Providers to MOD suppliers, They all have one thing in common, I can read every email, Every document , Every record in every database in every company, If its passworded i can change that password, if its encrypted i probably have the original key that created the encryption and can decrypt.

If I couldn't do that I couldn't do my job. And have writers cramp from signing all those NDA's

The point being if its stored electronically somebody somewhere can read it, even if its passworded or encrypted.
Your email provider can read you emails, Facebook admin can read your private messages, In fact thanks to the American Antiterrorism laws every message on face book is screened and messages containing certain keywords are forwarded to be reviewed, and the list goes on..

Ultimately Private is just a word beginning with P, otherwise it would just be a M system and not PM

MacDroitwich got around this little issue be renaming them Privledge Messages.
If you think PMs are private anywhere you are wrong. I was re banned from .cult for sending a pm to a friend telling him who i was... Canned before said friend even opened it. All mods on their read pms as a matter of course and especially new members ones.

So in summary, T-Bar’s admin don’t read PM’s except in extreme circumstances, and then only the site owner can do this. From experience, this is fairly unusual as, as far as I know, every forum that I’ve ever joined has had the capability for admin to read messages, and it’s fairly necessary to sort disputes or harassment between forum members.

For what it’s worth, I don’t have a problem with mods reading my PM’s and I can’t imagine that anyone else would unless they have an underlying reason for secrecy (breaking of forum rules, etc).

Forums are not a democracy, if you don’t agree to the rules when you join or don’t want your messages read then don’t join – it’s simple.


As for softly, this thread is totally unclear as to what happened. The sensible part of me suggests that what she did should be stated to prevent it happening again, whereas the nosey side of me just wants to know what’s been going on.

The Forum software we use here doesn't have its own native PM system, instead we have to rely on an additional component to handle that part, whilst this component does link the forum , user , groups and events together nicely, it doesn't provide an interface for administration of PM's,

I have a comment, personally I don't see how the ongoing discussion of this topic either here or in the asylum is productive or helpful. I suggest that like it or lump it, now that softly softly and puddles have been banned and no longer have the right of reply, further discussion is moot and we all should move on.

I agree.

Seen something similar on a land rover forum a few years ago and this is going the same way!!

Tell us what happened so we know what rules were broken so we all can avoid been banned then lock this thread.

Rules are there for a reason and if those rules are broken then the perpetrator deserves to be punished. However if Jan as she said responded to a request from other members then that could be seen as more of an error of judgement rather than a deliberate attempt to break the rules and probably should be dealt with with a slap on the wrist. However it is quite clear from the various threads that the mods have a lot more information which has not been shared with the forum members, I think the best way to deal with this is to publish all of the evidence which is being held on an open forum and allow members to make up their own minds if banning was the right course of action.I

I think that Jan has done a wonderful job in promoting this forum and I have never heard her say a bad word about, therefore to ban her the evidence must be very compelling and the only way to clarify what has happened is for us all to be made aware of it.